IIRC, when Khan was in the brig, he was telling Kirk and company things we knew to be lies.

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You don't RC. For one thing, as viewers we wouldn't have much more information than Kirk at that point, so if we knew the things Khan was telling Kirk were lies at the time we first saw the scene, Kirk probably should also have known this. But Kirk's behavior doesn't indicate any such knowledge, and it wouldn't make much sense for Khan to be telling Kirk things that were obviously lies. But do you mean that we found them to be lies later on in the film? Because that didn't happen either. But even if we were to rewrite Khan's dialogue and pepper it with things we "know" to be lies, it still wouldn't really matter. It still doesn't become reasonable to assume that Khan is someone who lies for no discernible purpose. And lying about the sequence of events serves no purpose if his objectives are equally served by not lying about the sequence of events.

The entire thing with the torpedoes is a bit convoluted, but within the logic of the movie, he's what I (at least) thought was happening:
-- Khan was in charge of developing the torpedoes.
-- Khan somehow had access to his people and believed he could smuggle them out inside the torpedoes.
-- At the right time, he would board the Vengeance when the torpedoes were delivered (the ship I'd imagine they were first designed for) and secretly thaw his people. They would take over the Vengeance and be on their merry way.
-- Marcus found out about the people in the torpedoes. Khan fled, and the events that we see in the movie unfold.
-- Marcus decides the best way to carry out his plan with things as they are now is to get rid of Khan and his people by giving the torpedoes to the Enterprise and send them on the mission to Kronos that he hopes will start a war.
-- Even without armed warheads, the torpedoes are almost certainly fueled (maybe by Section 31 before giving them to the Enterprise) and maybe warheads were even added.
-- In any case, even if they were all fired as duds or just the detonators exploded, it would still be an attack on the Klingon home world, and all hell would break loose.

The thing that's rather silly about the plan, though, is the need to fire all 72 torpedoes. Even if Kirk intended to use them, he could've decided using them all was too risky for starting a war, so he could've located Khan and fired only one or two at his position, which should've been enough.

It's impossible for Marcus' plan not to have been set in motion before Nero showed up. How could he possibly have built Vengeance, in secret, in less than a year? And he clearly tells us he wanted Kirk in that seat, he helped Pike advocate for Kirk Captaining the Enterprise.

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He may have been working towards something, but who says the Vengeance was built specifically with this plan in mind?

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It's been hypothesized, at least, that a ship or ship class of the same basic configuration had already been in the works by the time of the events shown in Star Trek 2009, which was then repurposed or had a side project split off by Marcus/Section 31 to become the Vengeance.

There is absolutely nothing to support this idea in either movie, while the second movie, short of having a character make a declarative, affirmative statement to confirm it, pretty much hinges on the overwhelming likelihood of Marcus having done just that--recovered the Botany Bay before the end of ST09.

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Khan's description of his awakening outright said that Section 31 began aggresively searching space 'as a result of the destruction of Vulcan', leading to the discovery of the Botany bay.

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Bear in mind, though, that several months must have passed between the destruction of Vulcan/defeat of Nero and the events at the conclusion of the 2009 film, in order to allow for partial recovery of Pike and major repairs to the Enterprise. It's not inconceivable that Marcus' Sec-31 operatives would have been able to locate Botany Bay and Khan during that interval.

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Exactly. Unless someone thinks that because we didn't see the time elapsed between those events (destruction of Vulcan and handover of the repaired Enterprise) happened in the space of hours. This also provides a (probably intentionally vague) time buffer between the main portion of the story and Kirk's actual promotion. The way many complaints are presented, it's as if Kirk was handed the ship permanently within a day of having boarded. (I'm not suggesting it wasn't awkwardly handled on screen--a tiny blurb with "xx time elapsed" would have made a significant dent into the complaints, but it was not instantaneous just because we don't see the time in-between.)

In any event, the material on screen in each film does not contradict the idea that Marcus set his plan in motion--including finding Khan--before the events at the end of the first film.

Once Marcus discovered that Khan's people were missing, you'd think he'd be able to figure out what had happened to them. The issue is whether Marcus intentionally gave Kirk possession of Khan's people. If Marcus had just wanted the superhumans dead, he could have just killed them, you know. Zap, they're dead.

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Unless he thought it was poetic justice. Or, if those torpedoes seemed the only way to guarantee Kirk would actually kill Khan and start a war at the same time and Marcus wasn't confident in his people's ability to remove the augments without damaging the torpedoes.

Khan and Marcus are the only sources we have for any of this. And their stories actually even agree for the most part. Unfortunately, their stories don't make all that much sense in light of the choices they made - which is why I find it particularly difficult to figure out exactly what is going on here.

Bear in mind, though, that several months must have passed between the destruction of Vulcan/defeat of Nero and the events at the conclusion of the 2009 film, in order to allow for partial recovery of Pike and major repairs to the Enterprise. It's not inconceivable that Marcus' Sec-31 operatives would have been able to locate Botany Bay and Khan during that interval.

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Exactly. Unless someone thinks that because we didn't see the time elapsed between those events (destruction of Vulcan and handover of the repaired Enterprise) happened in the space of hours. This also provides a (probably intentionally vague) time buffer between the main portion of the story and Kirk's actual promotion. The way many complaints are presented, it's as if Kirk was handed the ship permanently within a day of having boarded. (I'm not suggesting it wasn't awkwardly handled on screen--a tiny blurb with "xx time elapsed" would have made a significant dent into the complaints, but it was not instantaneous just because we don't see the time in-between.)

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No, it wasn't instantaneous. But how do we know anything at all about exactly how long it was? Pike was being treated with the best of 23rd century medicine, and the Enterprise could've been absolute top priority at the spacedock. In fact, it probably would've been considering all the other ships were completely beyond repair.

In any event, the material on screen in each film does not contradict the idea that Marcus set his plan in motion--including finding Khan--before the events at the end of the first film.

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Even if it did take a few months before the end of 09 happened, that's not a lot of time for Section 31 to get its hands on a search fleet, actually start aggresively searching, find the Botany Bay floating in the middle of empty space, figure out who they're looking at, bring the ship safely into custody and inform Marcus for him to make the decision to use khan, and formulate a plan before the decision to promote Kirk was made.

Especially since, let's also not forget, the ceremony at the end of the film is not the moment when the admiralty decided to make him captain. That happened offscreen in the missing time, potentially some time before the ceremony itself.

The entire thing with the torpedoes is a bit convoluted, but within the logic of the movie, he's what I (at least) thought was happening:
-- Khan was in charge of developing the torpedoes.
-- Khan somehow had access to his people and believed he could smuggle them out inside the torpedoes.
-- At the right time, he would board the Vengeance when the torpedoes were delivered (the ship I'd imagine they were first designed for) and secretly thaw his people. They would take over the Vengeance and be on their merry way.
-- Marcus found out about the people in the torpedoes. Khan fled, and the events that we see in the movie unfold.
-- Marcus decides the best way to carry out his plan with things as they are now is to get rid of Khan and his people by giving the torpedoes to the Enterprise and send them on the mission to Kronos that he hopes will start a war.
-- Even without armed warheads, the torpedoes are almost certainly fueled (maybe by Section 31 before giving them to the Enterprise) and maybe warheads were even added.
-- In any case, even if they were all fired as duds or just the detonators exploded, it would still be an attack on the Klingon home world, and all hell would break loose.

The thing that's rather silly about the plan, though, is the need to fire all 72 torpedoes. Even if Kirk intended to use them, he could've decided using them all was too risky for starting a war, so he could've located Khan and fired only one or two at his position, which should've been enough.

Anyway, that's my best attempt at all this.

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And its not a bad summary given what we know in my view, but there are still a few issues:

- Why would Marcus keep Khan's crew anywhere near Khan?
- Giving the torpedoes to Kirk (a known loose canon) and in such quantity, especially with the requirement they not examine them, was asking for trouble. Why take that risk when he could have just removed Khan's crew and not raised suspicion, comment or resignations?
- Of course there is unlikely to be room for fuel or a warhead when what looked like well over half the internal volume was taken up with something that is not supposed to be there.
- Even if armed and fuelled, what was so special about these torpedoes that standard models couldn't do given that Kirk managed to get a small ship all the way to the Klingon home-world?

By the way, I must have missed something, why would Section 31 be looking for Khan in the first place? Wasn't Spock Prime supposed to be keeping quiet about his future knowledge and even if "forced" to give them something, why Khan? He was discovered by accident last time wasn't he? Wouldn't Spock prefer to leave him be and tell them about the planet smasher or something?

They weren't looking for Khan. They were searching deep space for anything that they could use. They stumbled upon him just like Kirk did.

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Remember the bulk of the fleet is on the side of the Federation in the Laurentian System for some reason that we really not a reason for. So there was something going on that we didn't know about

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The Federation could a little more paranoid in this universe and constantly scanning space. Even in TOS, their relationship with the Romulans is tense. In this universe, a Starfleet ship encounters a vastly superior Romulan ship and gets attacked for no reason. The only thing that saved the survivors is the actions of George Kirk. I doubt they would buy the Romulan Empire's excuse that it wasn't their bad, it was some jerk from the future. That is if they were even able to make any sort of contact with them. Later Kirk mentions that saving Nero could lead to peace with them. So there may be an ongoing conflict with them at this point. This gets made worse with the destruction of Vulcan and the attack on Earth and a decent portion of the fleet. The Federation is likely on the brink of war at this point and looking for any future attack.

The thing that's rather silly about the plan, though, is the need to fire all 72 torpedoes. Even if Kirk intended to use them, he could've decided using them all was too risky for starting a war, so he could've located Khan and fired only one or two at his position, which should've been enough.

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Marcus really doesn't need all the torpedoes to be fired just enough to piss off the Klingons. He was expecting the Enterprise to be crippled (by his sabotage) and then attacked and destroyed by the Klingons thus destroying all the torps.

Of course there is unlikely to be room for fuel or a warhead when what looked like well over half the internal volume was taken up with something that is not supposed to be there.

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As Franklin suggested Khan may have been involved in developing the torpedoes. This opens up the possibility that the torpedoes could have been made smaller but were made the usual size with redundant fuel cells or other ways of providing excess internal space.

The thing that's rather silly about the plan, though, is the need to fire all 72 torpedoes. Even if Kirk intended to use them, he could've decided using them all was too risky for starting a war, so he could've located Khan and fired only one or two at his position, which should've been enough.

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Marcus really doesn't need all the torpedoes to be fired just enough to piss off the Klingons. He was expecting the Enterprise to be crippled (by his sabotage) and then attacked and destroyed by the Klingons thus destroying all the torps.

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Good point. Or, Kirk would use what were left to defend the Enterprise. Either way, it's all good for Marcus.

Of course there is unlikely to be room for fuel or a warhead when what looked like well over half the internal volume was taken up with something that is not supposed to be there.

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As Franklin suggested Khan may have been involved in developing the torpedoes. This opens up the possibility that the torpedoes could have been made smaller but were made the usual size with redundant fuel cells or other ways of providing excess internal space.

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Khan had to know he needed some kind of plan to save himself and his people. He knew not to trust Marcus. As soon as he wasn't useful to Marcus any more, he and his people would be dead. (After all, if the shoe had been on the other foot, that's probably how Khan would've played it.)

The thing that's rather silly about the plan, though, is the need to fire all 72 torpedoes. Even if Kirk intended to use them, he could've decided using them all was too risky for starting a war, so he could've located Khan and fired only one or two at his position, which should've been enough.

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Marcus really doesn't need all the torpedoes to be fired just enough to piss off the Klingons. He was expecting the Enterprise to be crippled (by his sabotage) and then attacked and destroyed by the Klingons thus destroying all the torps.

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My thinking runs similarly - recall that Chekov discovered the malfunction and manually dumped them out of warp. I think Marcus plan was for that sabotage to cause Enterprise to get stuck much closer to Kronos where she'd be more easily discovered and destroyed by the Klingons - taking the evidence of the torpedoes with her.

With regard to the torpedoes themselves - I think the dialog stated that the fuel compartment had been altered to house the cryotubes. So I'm guessing they had live warheads (perhaps that is something that can be easily deteteced by scan) but if you tried to actually shoot them, they wouldn't go anywhere.

With regard to the torpedoes themselves - I think the dialog stated that the fuel compartment had been altered to house the cryotubes. So I'm guessing they had live warheads (perhaps that is something that can be easily deteteced by scan) but if you tried to actually shoot them, they wouldn't go anywhere.

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Marcus knew about Khan's people being in them, however, and he still expected Kirk to shoot them at Kronos. If they don't go anywhere there's no incident. Unlikely as it may seem, the torpedoes are just designed to work normally even with the introduction of the cryotubes.

With regard to the torpedoes themselves - I think the dialog stated that the fuel compartment had been altered to house the cryotubes. So I'm guessing they had live warheads (perhaps that is something that can be easily deteteced by scan) but if you tried to actually shoot them, they wouldn't go anywhere.

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Marcus knew about Khan's people being in them, however, and he still expected Kirk to shoot them at Kronos. If they don't go anywhere there's no incident. Unlikely as it may seem, the torpedoes are just designed to work normally even with the introduction of the cryotubes.

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My thinking was Enterprise showing up adrift deep in Klingon space would be incident enough, with the postulate that Marcus intended them to be a lot closer before breaking down, if that were the case there's no need to actually shoot the torpedoes.

But if he had intended them to be closer before breaking down, wouldn't the malfunction have been timed to achieve that result? Also, according to Marcus' orders the Enterprise was to go to the "edge of the Neutral Zone" and it was only due to Kirk's changing the plan that they actually went to Kronos, but I concede that the film unfortunately acts as though the Neutral Zone goes right up to Kronos' doorstep.

Of course there is unlikely to be room for fuel or a warhead when what looked like well over half the internal volume was taken up with something that is not supposed to be there.

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As Franklin suggested Khan may have been involved in developing the torpedoes. This opens up the possibility that the torpedoes could have been made smaller but were made the usual size with redundant fuel cells or other ways of providing excess internal space.

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Khan had to know he needed some kind of plan to save himself and his people. He knew not to trust Marcus. As soon as he wasn't useful to Marcus any more, he and his people would be dead. (After all, if the shoe had been on the other foot, that's probably how Khan would've played it.)

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Oh sure, Khan needed a plan. It's just a question of how practical this one was. It's a given that Marcus would be keeping a pretty close eye on Khan if Khan is involved in developing weapons for him. That presumably is how he discovered Khan's plans. So over-specing the torpedoes, or developing a breakthrough miniaturised propulsion system (to allow more room) are the sort of things Marcus would likely hear of. So I guess we have to assume Marcus agreed to an over capable missile for general purpose use, rather than one optimismed for the Klingon mission. Particularly as they built 72 of them when a handful would do the job. Granted Marcus must have had a different plan if Khan hadn't gone rogue.

However to me, having Marcus decide to keep Khan's crew in the torpedoes seems to be a plot-hole since the limited benefit of disposing of them in this fashion is outweighed by the potential for disaster (made worse by getting Kirk to be his delivery system). They appear to be there solely for the benefit of the plot.

People call me a hater. Probably being a life long Trek fan from the time i was able to talk has made me a person who expects certain things from my beloved Star Trek. So I thought, what is it that I don't like about JJ Abrams new star trek movies. What is it that bothers me but doesn't bother other people. So I thought I'd go out on the limb and make a list of things I do not like. In doing this I thought "Well people are gonna see some of these as ridiculous because it doesn't bother them as much as it does me". It very well might come down to my OCD. So you NuTrek lovers, please don't get mad at me. This is a list of things that just bothers ME. And I will trashtalk the movie makers a bit, I do that to people who aggravate my OCD lol. Now as Khan put it....Shall We Begin....

...

5. Spock and Uhura.... Yes Uhura was flirtacious with spock in TOS, but WTF? Actually I said that out loud in the theatre before I caught my self. I have problems with a lot of characters acting out of character.

... But where it seems to me the producers were so careless, and turned star trek into something that almost makes it something differnt than Star Trek, It makes me hate it. I try hard to explain my point of view, and I cant find the words I need.

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I'm relieved to see I'm not the only one who disliked the 2009 movie, and for some of the same reasons.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fK3Fc14xOu8[/yt]
The history of Spock flirting with Uhura.

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The only part of that that's remotely flirtatious is the music/singing. And I attribute that more to Nimoy having a hard time keeping a straight face, than anything else. In the scene where Uhura talks about Vulcan's moon, Spock just seems confused as to what she's actually getting at, so he latches on to the part of it he can counter with plain fact: Vulcan has no moon. The rest is just so much nonsense. Of course we've seen art that seems to refute that, but another explanation was put forth that it's actually a twin planet, which is different from a moon. And Spock helping Uhura up off the floor when she has fallen down is the logical thing to do. No romantic motive is either present or necessary.

It'd be interesting to see how many of the built-it-on-the-ground-is-fine-because-it-is-the-future-and-energy-is-free folks grew up as much on STAR WARS as TREK. Seems the generation that saw SW before 2001 (if they saw the latter at all) is much more inclined to give more credence to the fantasy aspect than anything even vaguely science-based (and they were, I suppose, rewarded with the starship SEAVIEW earlier this year.)

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I don't think the chronological age of a fan is the determinant of whether he/she prefers to believe in pseudoscience or technobabble over sensible extrapolations based on real science. Some people are just scientifically-literate enough to realize when other people who write/produce science fiction either have no real grounding in science, or else they assume the audience doesn't (or both). That said, I read 2001 (the book) before seeing the movie, and both happened on the same weekend in late 1975. Less than two years later, I was part of a massive lineup of mostly young people waiting to see Star Wars. So it was basically at the same stage of my life, but my reading habits were still firmly in the "hard science fiction" subgenre (with Asimov's nonfiction essays included in my recreational reading), while my TV habits included a lot of science documentaries.

^That's some pretty foolish stuff. Building the shuttle on the ground has NOTHING to do with building a starship there.

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Why not? A starship is just a spaceship the size of an aircraft carrier. We build aircraft carriers on the ground too.

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I don't remember hearing about any aircraft carriers in orbit. And unless you can afford to squander a hell of a lot of resources (can't really say "money" unless the nuTrek universe actually uses it?), a gravity well is still a gravity well and escape velocity doesn't change.

Not the same Egg, not the same Sperm. Basically this Pavel is as much Pavel, as Pavel's older brother would be. So in essence, this Chekov is Pavel's older brother that ended up being named Pavel.

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Pavel never had a brother. So if nuChekov is really TOSChekov's older brother, he doesn't exist - which would have been preferable to the Russian-accented version of Wesley that showed up instead of an earnestly-dignified young officer of the right age group.

Why would we need it, exactly? Why would the question even come up? No great fuss is made of Kirk as being Awesomely Special in the actual series, there's no reason to assume he wouldn't have come to his post via a reasonably "normal" chain of command.

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Because at the age of 32 ("The Deadly Years") he was already in command of a Constitution-class starship and was obviously much younger than every other captain we saw in the series.

Maybe Kirk and Picard and Sisko and Janeway all refused whatever rewards they were offered for saving earth or various other planets, without it being referenced onscreen. But why did all the junior officers who single handedly saved starships still have to wait years, if ever, to be promoted at all, let alone leapfrogging ranks? Did Wesley say 'No, I don't want to be a lieutenant.'? Did O'Brien say 'I'd rather stay non-commissioned, thanks.'?

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Actually, Picard did refuse a promotion (to take over running the Academy). And it's obvious that Janeway didn't refuse her promotion to the admiralty. I seem to recall an occasion when O'Brien indeed expressed a preference to not be an officer. And Wesley, by quitting and going off with the Traveler basically did say he didn't want to be a lieutenant.

At what point does what's happened in past productions cease to matter? What does it take to make it not matter?

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One might just as well ask at what point will self-proclaimed wardens of True Trek™ cease pronouncing new movie X or new series Y to be "not Real Star Trek™"? If that ever transpires, my guess would be that what happened in past productions will begin mattering a great deal less right about then. If one would draw comparisons, though, it helps to bear in mind that the traffic on that street runs both ways.

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If the new stuff that calls itself Star Trek were actually like Star Trek and wasn't so dumbed-down, I'd consider it more real. When they improve sufficiently, I'll cease to consider it "not-real".

I would say that as part of that change in Star Trek, we are now subject to the ideas of a universe that has an active agent of fate...

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But we've had that since "Pen Pals". People fated to die by a mystical "cosmic plan". That's the whole cornerstone of the 24th century Prime Directive.

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Yep, Picard's self-righteous magic Ouija board that trumps plain compassion and humanity. It's ridiculous to say that the aliens in that episode were "fated" to die. The only reason Picard said that is because he initially chose not to help them.

...and that our characters are now superheroes. Part of that means more unrealistic and fantastical elements making their way in than before, and one of those things is a person going from a cadet on probation to captain of the flagship.

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Kirk and Spock were always super-heroes.

I mean, Kirk was literally out there fighting for truth, justice and the American way. Spock was super-strong with cool mind powers. Both had cool duds that separated them from the bad guys.

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Superheroes wear magic longjohns and capes and have some kind of "power" that normal people don't have. They're also supposed to have some sort of Achilles heel (ie. kryptonite) that will stop them in their tracks. Neither Kirk nor Spock qualify for superhero-hood... at least in TOS. TOS Kirk and Spock sometimes do heroic things, but that doesn't make them superheroes. Maybe nuKirk and nuSpock get magic longjohns in STID? I haven't seen it yet, so I can't be sure about that.

When TNG introduced a 14 year old Alpha-shift hemsmen, did the TNG fans go crazy? Wesley was the son of Picard's two best friends so there must have been the hint of nepotism there.
Did GRs fantasy of himself as a boy destroy Star Trek as we knew it? Nope we sucked it up and moved on.

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I still have my "SHUT UP WESLEY in an airtight box" button. I have another button that says, "Wesley's not so bad - at least he didn't try to write and direct a major motion picture" (a dig at William Shatner for the mess that was Star Trek V). And one of the panelists at the local SF conventions around that time was a guy who had the misfortune to be almost a dead ringer for Wil Wheaton (slightly older, but the resemblance was positively eerie). Nobody was openly rude to him in a malicious way, but he did endure a lot of "Wesley" jokes those weekends.